This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Evertype (talk | contribs) at 15:38, 11 November 2006 (Deleting redundant section altogether. What is not in the standard is not encyclopaedic. The See Also points to the page where what is not in the standard is discussed.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 15:38, 11 November 2006 by Evertype (talk | contribs) (Deleting redundant section altogether. What is not in the standard is not encyclopaedic. The See Also points to the page where what is not in the standard is discussed.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)ISO 15924, Codes for the representation of names of scripts, defines two sets of codes for a number of writing systems (scripts). Each script is given both a four-letter code and a numeric one.
Script is defined as "set of graphic characters used for the written form of one or more languages". So scripts that are not (yet) "used for the written form of one language" are explicitly excluded.
Where possible the codes are derived from ISO 639-2 where the name of a script and the name of a language using the script are identical (example: Gujarātī ISO 639 guj, ISO 15924 Gujr). Preference is given to the 639-2 Bibliographical codes, which is different to the otherwise often favored use of the Terminological codes.
ISO 15924 could be used, similarly to ISO 3166, in addition to ISO 639, which defines codes for natural languages, for instance in markup languages like HTML and XML to help Web browsers determine which typeface to use for foreign text. This way one could differentiate, for example, between Serbian written in the Cyrillic (srp-Cyrl) or Latin (srp-Latn) script, or mark romanized text as such.
Maintenance
ISO has appointed the Unicode Consortium as the Registration Authority for the standard. In 2004, the Registration Authority appointed Michael Everson to act as Registrar.
Script codes
Numeric ranges
000-099 Hieroglyphic and cuneiform scripts 100-199 Right-to-left alphabetic scripts 200-299 Left-to-right alphabetic scripts 300-399 Alphasyllabic scripts 400-499 Syllabic scripts 500-599 Ideographic scripts 600-699 Undeciphered scripts 700-799 (unassigned) 800-899 (unassigned) 900-999 Private use, aliases, special codes
Special codes
Zxxx || 997 || Code for unwritten languages Zyyy || 998 || Code for undetermined script Zzzz || 999 || Code for uncoded script
Qaaa-Qabx are 50 codes for private use. The Qaaa-Qabx range is not mentioned in the standard itself, but in the codelist.